


dead of night

by windbellows



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Worldbuilding, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25503262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windbellows/pseuds/windbellows
Summary: He shares the same eyes as the lone wolves of Retsam Forest, fierce and quiet.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	dead of night

**Author's Note:**

> recently finished a twilight princess playthrough (which COMPLETELY altered my brain chemistry so hopefully i'll be posting more soon) and couldn't shake the question of why there weren't any ordon village ruins, like even though it wasn't part of hyrule neither was mabe village and yet. not even a spare easter egg... so here is another linkfic i love ordona enjoy  
> edit: completely rewrote this, as i tend to do! still the same content, just rearranged, and with some additional stuff. it always ate at me how there were statues of hylia at the springs of Wisdom and Power and Courage when she is nothing of the sort, and i know it's because of skyward sword but also fuck hylia so. yeah! obligatory wind fish mention

Night falls upon Hyrule Field, and a swordsman gallops through the lonely field, though he is no more a swordsman as he is a cook, or perhaps a beast. There are four Divine Beasts at the corners of the land; he stands in their shadows, crouches at a campfire or squints through blistering heat, and maybe there was always something familiar about their rage, the epic pride in their prowl. There was a fifth after all, a beast before the Beasts, and they had to be made in the image of _something._ But he doesn’t recognize them nor does he know this, and so Link heads down the midnight road, eyes drawn not to the stars tonight but the spaces in between. 

One of thunder, one of fire, one of water, one of wind - one of twilight, and perhaps rather than the fifth it was the first. 

Ghosts once cried across the field. Link hears their murmurs and their sighs, and he feels them, sometimes, when taking refuge in the bones of a house or just rummaging through the old wood but he does not hear their song. Over the moonlight field he finds himself straining his ears for music he doesn’t know, or that he may have heard, once. The ghosts don’t sing anymore; there is no one to sing to, hasn’t been for a long time. 

There are ghosts all over, he supposes. Ghosts of people, ghosts of trees, ghosts of ruins. A formidable house stands in the icy Hebra Mountains, all glass and stone and crumbling, but he blinks and it’s gone - there is a small cooking pot though, out of place and far from any path on Selmie’s map, and Link gratefully starts a fire, holding his hands near the heat. Broken pillars mark the territory of a sole Molduga and as he collects its organs into the slate Link is sure that something awful happened here, and he checks over his shoulders in a furtive manner, over and over, and leaves as soon as possible.

(It is a cursed place, and the Molduga knows this, and in the wake of the next Blood Moon it notes with some amusement that the small creature with the quick steps does not return. But the sand-fish have swum in the desert since time eternal and what lingering tragedy still haunts the old grounds does not haunt them, and so it lurks under the twisted protection of the place, a shield of cries and tears and grudges from years past, thousands deep in the sand.)

Link clucks to his horse, urging it faster through the night. 

He finds a wooden charm in the Faron Woods one day, buried deep between the roots of a tree, and brushing off the dirt reveals it to be a wolf, not unlike the charms he sees hanging from the fences of farms, or Stables. Sometimes it’s an owl or a bull, or something that might be a dragon but he can’t really tell, and sometimes it’s a seagull, but sometimes it’s a wolf, too. He thinks they’re for protection so he pockets it because why not, and later rubs gently at the wood as he lies by a fire and wonders, and wonders. Hyrule is built of ruins upon ruins, and it occurs to Link then for whatever reason that somewhere nearby there _should_ be a village nestled in the hills except there isn’t, but maybe he’s lying _over_ it. 

There are ghosts of ruins and there are ghosts of Link, all over the place. He clutches the wolf close and dreams of a bridge over a ravine, one side hooked to the Faron Woods and the other to-

A legend echoes throughout Hyrule, an old farmer’s tale of a protector spirit; the wolf in the night, who appears when the moon hides behind the darkened sky, or Malice clouds. Grandmothers swear their mothers in turn had heard the snarling of a beast outside their doors, driving away the red hot beams of Guardians, and others talk quietly of when they were little and running from the remnants of the Calamity, caught up in flame and ash, that there had been a shadow of a wolf at their side, keeping the dangers at bay. Sharp teeth bared. 

In Hateno Link dodges the wrath of Koyin and her stick. “That meat is _not_ yours,” she snarls, poking him away from the plate sitting by her door. “It’s for- oh, never mind.”

The wolf charm sits heavy in Link’s pocket. Koyin sighs, relenting. 

“I’m just getting _desperate_ , you know? We live in the shadow of the goddess-“ she accentuates this with a jab towards the top of Mt. Lanayru- “But we’ve had to do everything ourselves, this whole time, and I’m exhausted, and I keep losing sheep. My only hope is this story my mom used to tell me. And you, I guess. I was just joking, you know that, right? You look scrawny.”

Later the darkness is his cover, his companion. Link wipes his mouth, and heads away. He glides down towards Hateno Beach, where the camp awaits; the moon hangs in the shadows and he strikes. 

When he returns to Koyin in the morning, covering in monster blood and guts, she’s almost speechless - he stands in her doorway illuminated by the dawn, and she can’t help but notice he shares the same eyes as the lone wolves of Retsam Forest, fierce and quiet. She doesn’t say this and thanks him instead, profusely so, insisting he take some milk before he leaves. 

A pack of wolves roaming by the road catch sight of him and his horse and they start to howl, running close, but he bares his teeth and they balk. The Hero gallops ahead. 

Another charm sits next to the wolf in his pocket, a Korok, half-finished. He’s not the best at carving but people at the Stables have been kind enough to give him pointers, and even kinder to not ask what exactly it’s supposed to be, but he doesn’t care if they do. It’s not as though he’d lie to them. Link sees things that others don’t and he’s accepted it, and so have they. It does eat at him, though, when he crouches to take a cupful of water from a stream and sees the water is _glowing_ , and there’s a song coming from it, a little faint but it’s there, and if Kass was present he would call it a lament; Link shrugs it off like he always does. There are always questions with answers out of his reach, and he is the biggest of them all, so he goes on his way like he does, his shadow by his side, constant. 

But the answers are _just_ out of reach, so close he can grasp it; Link is the answer, of course, the key to his own lock. Before the Divine Beasts there was a first, and before him there were four more, and their waters may have sunken into the ground but the streams haven’t forgotten, and though no one remembers the true natures of the light spirits save the Zora, they are always there, in the stories and the tales. One still sings to her Hero, the proudest of them all. 

_You see?_ she says to her cousins. _You see?_

Yet - Link is not a god, no, but he is something more, ruins and legends and whispered pleas and soft, fierce courage within the boy galloping through the night, and his teeth are sharp, and his nose sharper. Perhaps he is more like the Wind Fish, but one is only so in name only, and Link is most certainly Link. There is no cry of song across the Field but the night sings to him against the rhythm of hoofbeats, as it always has and always will, and a beast curls against the inside of his head, a wolfish thing. 

There are ghosts of sacred springs across the land. The fairies remain, if one chooses to look.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
